Professor Erkki Lahesmaa visited the Conservatoire

From November 4 to November 7, 2019, as a result of the cooperation agreement signed between the Petrozavodsk State Glazunov Conservatoire and the Turku University of Applied Sciences, Professor Erkki Lahesmaa (cello), education co-ordinator of Music at the TUAS Arts Academy, visited the conservatoire.

The program of the official visit supported by the Russian-Finnish student and teacher mobility program FIRST+, included master classes in cello for the students of the Petrozavodsk State Glazunov Conservatoire and a meeting with the rector Aleksei Kubyshkin on future cooperation between partner institutions as we as negotiations with the Strings department teachers.

Besides that Prof. Lahesmaa served as a member of the jury in the Strings section at the 3rd International Youth Music Alexander Glazunov Competition along with Prof. Aleksander Stang from St. Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory and Prof. Clementy Veksler from the Petrozavodsk State Glazunov Conservatoire. There were 25 participants of the auditions in the Strings section - mostly violin and cello performers between the ages of 9 and 25 years old.

Plans for future cooperation between the partner institutions include student mobility projects in chamber music and teacher exchange.

Erkki Lahesmaa studied the cello with Aldo Parisot, Zara Nelsova, Harvey Shapiro and Timo Hanhinen at the Juilliard School, the Yale University and the Turku Conservatory (Finland).

He has also had extensive chamber music studies with, among others, the Juilliard- and Tokyo string quartets.

In 1990 Mr. Lahesmaa won the Juilliard competition in USA and in 1986 the second prize in the Turku cello competition in Finland.

Mr. Lahesmaa made his debut in New York in 1990 performing the Dvorak concerto at the Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center. Since then he has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe, USA, Canada, South-America and Japan. Most recent soloist appearances have been with conductors such as Leif Segerstam and others with cello concertos of Kalevi Aho, Camille Saint-Saëns and Beethoven’s triple concerto.

Mr. Lahesmaa is also an active performer of contemporary music and several works by Finnish composers have been written and dedicated to him.

As a chamber musician, he has been a member of the Artisti del Mondo and the Coryton ensembles in USA and the Arthur-Leblanc string quartet in Canada. He is also a member of the Plus Ensemble and the Ad Libitum piano trio.

Latest appearances have been in the Warsaw Autumn-festival and Berliner Festspiele’s MaerzMusik last year.

Mr. Lahesmaa has also made numerous recordings and and his CD with Plus Ensemble won the best classical album award in 2010.

Erkki Lahesmaa is senior lecturer of cello and chamber music at the Turku Music Academy in Finland.

He has been a jury member in numerous music competitions and has been invited to give master classes, among others, in Beijing and Shanghai conservatories, Santiago de Chile, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Florence, San Sebastian, Lisbon, Glasgow, Weimar, Bremen, Palermo, Trieste, Valencia, Sevilla, Salamanca, Reykjavik, Bergen, Oslo and Stavanger.

Erkki Lahesmaa is the director of Nauvo Chamber Music Festival in Finland.